Of Cats and Kings
by Orahiko
Summary: Pot drabbles. Yaoi. Multiple pairings. 'I don't love you often.'
1. Chapter 1

**I keep writing Pot drabbles, often ones that take a long time to continue, and I think I'll keep writing them, so this is a place to store them, overall.**

**Thanks to wonderful people. **

**Urchin Power; wow, you're so very kind. I'm working on being less confusing ;;**

**Valsed; um, that really wasn't a deathfic…thanks for the review, tho! **

**Ki-ku-maru Beam; thanks! Yes, it came across as very hard, I realize that, it's just part it, I guess…thank you, though. I agree.**

**Fallen Fantasist; thank you so much for continuing to review. It's wonderful to hear from you. You make me smile….**

**Don't own. **

…………………

He volunteered to be a model, a useless waste of time indeed, but he wanted the extra credit. He modeled during his study hall, something he hadn't needed anyway.

Momo laughed, surprised. Nobody was quite sure what to think, but Taka commented that he would do fine.

Of course he would.

……….

Act One

He sits motionless in a foldable chair, the cold metal curves pressing against his back and spine. The metal was scratched lightly in places, catching the dim morning light and reflecting back in pale radiance. His posture felt stiff and unrelenting, his expression distant, body lightly draped in white cotton, a former sheet randomly volunteered by one of the students. Sweat beaded almost indistinguishably on his skin, even though goose bumps rose on his forearms, due to the chill in the air.

A half-open window behind him provided golden light partially blocked by an old screen clogged with dust.

It shouldn't have mattered, but the little things itched at him like grains of sand and grit. It was warm and cold, and he was sweating, he wasn't the only one, but the atmosphere was so tensely concentrated no one spoke, a vast conspiracy in a living hive.

The first few minutes aren't too bad, cool defiance at the dilated, squinting eyes of his watchers slowly ebbing as no one speaks, and he wants to say something, do anything, to finish this.

He sits and waits, instead.

There isn't anything else to do.

Stuck in an awkward position, he chose to ignore his haphazard pose, his eyes scanning the room to brush over intent students; rapidly and anxiously sketching, their eyes flickering from the pages of brown covered notebooks to his face, drawn irresistibly to hover at a faint horizon line. The painted floor was smooth and cracked; gashes of paint lay at odd angles like layer after layer of paper-thin frames lay on the floor, the results of easel bases and clumsy children and rainbows of paint. He thinks that it would pass muster in an art show as easily as one of their drawings, it's been made with more effort, if less care, but then he doesn't really know much about art anyway. He shifts; imperceptivity and the fine weave of the cheap cotton catches against the chair, the noise sounding awkward and strange. The plump art teacher steps forward, her pearl earrings clacking across her chin with every step, and he narrows his eyes, daring her to admonish him. She steps back, her lips pursed, clutching a clipboard to her ample bosom like she's won.

He feels like a Pied Piper, leading there to wherever he wishes while they follow blindly, stumbling drunkenly after him in desperation. He wonders if these rats know how to dance, how desperately they seek him.

He doesn't have a horizon line to fix his eyes upon, they do, and it's an unfair trade. His expression is forbidding, he knows that, but all the same he makes an effort not to swivel his eyes, to turn his head. He frowns. His eyes are caught between the angles of the room, he feels dizzy, and wonders if he's swaying. His clenched fingernails bite into his palm, the meager pain allowing him to focus on something else, anything else, and anxiety and an odd, light, full feeling rises in him, and he chokes back saliva.

The ceiling is pale gray, maybe bluish, the light is faint and he's not allowed to shift position anyway. He likes it. He'd like it even better if he could see it. It's scratched with fine gray marks, as if someone doodled on it with a pencil, but then again, the students probably couldn't reach, anyway. He focuses on the moving hands; rapidly waving pencil tops like impatient cilia, and freezes. The brightening light barely touches the naked corner of his eye, gilding the edge of his vision, and transforming a certain area into vague wavering shapes of gold and red. He closes his eyes, feels coarse lashes press against skin, and absently notes the commotion around him, the shuffling of feet and usual awkwardness of a too-full room.

Fuji smiles. Not at him, gesturing skillfully into the air with a paint-encrusted palette knife, he inclines his head, graceful. Steady. Hidden behind arms and legs and shoulders draped in bright, dark colors, unassuming but never unnoticed, yet Tezuka _knows_ he's there, pale blank eyes intent, feels the pressure softly push at him, a velvet weight on his shoulders. The air is warmer, but he doesn't feel it.

Instead, he feels the pressure. Hears the murmurs. Invisible eyes focus on him, greedy, bold, uncompromisingly frank and impersonal, and he feels them dissect him. They don't all look up, but he can tell. They want him. Want more than mere aesthetics, more than the hunch of his shoulder; the bunching of fabric caught in the crook of his elbow, that and more, much, much more. He feels them begin to dissect him, changing his jaw to an soft angle, face into a formal grid, eyes become sketched circles, and ovals, the clench in his throat varies the strokes of gray, a crooked line for his knee, long tapering tubes replacing fingertips. Thin lines drawn around his heart, thin enough to slip through his fingers, under bones and between ribcages, they tug on him insistently, cocooning him till he can barely move.

They want a thought, an ideal to paint and he gives them that, nothing more, because he doesn't _owe_ it to them, not precisely, but he's never been one for giving more than asked, and he's a good model, and a gentle enough doll, but he's not exactly _kind_. He doesn't need to be, that's all.

He doesn't mind. He knew what he signed up for, knew what he was doing, but knowing doesn't mean you have to like it. He hasn't liked anything for a while. The hunger in their eyes is merely for his flesh, and that's the first, the easiest sacrifice to make, but somehow it would seem almost cruel if they wanted more from him. It isn't something he's prepared to give.

He's used to being devoured. Now he knows what it is to take that dizzying step.

He wouldn't trust anyone with more, but it's taken anyway. Though not by them.

It's over. Blood stirs sluggishly in him, slow and sweet like honey. He can leave. He stands up and gathers his tennis bag. Fuji waits for him outside the classroom, his smile angelic, his skin outlined in gold and amber.

For all the time Tezuka has known him, he's still the same, beautiful and unkind.

He walks outside, into the lion's open maw.

_Are you unhappy? Let's be unhappy together…_


	2. Comics and fairy tale endings

Don't own.

**There will be longer ones ahead. Just not now.**

Yaoi, Momo/Ryoma, Tezuka/Fuji.

………

I never saw a hero.

The topic didn't particularly consume me as it did some of my other friends, one of which nagged his parents into going to a comic convention some four hundred miles away, just to see one in the flesh, and returned announcing that his particular hero liked tuna fish and mumbled a lot when kids asked him questions. Then again, that was America.

I saw a few of the shows when I had a spare moment to waste, which wasn't usual, since practice took up most of my time. It wasn't terribly fascinating; to watch brightly colored characters, seemingly as dimensional as paper, flicker on and off the screen with increasing speed.

None of them played tennis.

The girls might have been interesting, had they shown any more aptitude or skill. They certainly were more focused than the guys, who posed a lot and smiled often, showing flashes of white teeth and discreet spandex logos.

I thought I could beat them in a game of tennis, provided they didn't call me bud. Or little feller.

I'd have won anyway.

Watching great tennis players was boring, most of them looked glazed, with like haircuts flopping over sweaty brows. They looked asleep, unenthusiastic, or chillingly cold with the eyes of predators. The stands were full of people with the same looks in their eyes, or worse, enthusiastic ecstasy. I think those scared me the most; that bone deep worship of people as distant as the stars to them, as far away as a figure on a screen. People they didn't know but loved unconditionally.

I thought all adults were like that, but I guess they weren't.

Maybe fathers were supposed to be heroes, but I couldn't imagine it. Most people seemed to be content to whine a little about their allowance and their fathers, and be happy staring at a cardboard cutout, elbows against the glass of a comic book store window. I didn't really understand.

There wasn't much point in worshiping someone you were determined to beat, and I told that to my teacher when she asked us who our heroes were. She choked a little, and fumbled with the string around her neck that her glasses hung onto, like she did whenever she was nervous or didn't know what to say. I sat there; thinking that was fine, at least honest, but she didn't call on me again for the rest of class.

My father read porn and drank sake; he lounged around in a robe with stubble on his chin. He couldn't have been a hero if he tried. Even if I wasn't quite sure what a hero was.

Then we moved to Japan, and I didn't expect to find any heroes there.

I thought I saw one once, he was tall against the bright afternoon sky, with a tennis racket on his shoulder. His eyes were dark and amused, and purple when he smiled, and his hair looked red-dark in the light.

I remember his eyes that day. They were almost unnatural, like slate, the color of brick shadows and ripe plums and paint; like the lilacs my cousin grew.

I beat the hero, and he was everything he should have been, strong and strangely tactful, laughing at everything, wanting more than everything. He was cleverer than I had thought he'd be, exhilarating and happy and sarcastic.

His clothes looked like splotches of white and yellow, awkward on the uniform lines of green court, the ball bouncing softly before our waiting rackets. He shaded his eyes often with raw, calloused hands, and I didn't like that.

I thought that was that, and didn't dream that night.

He couldn't have been a hero, though, because heroes are never defeated. Never. But I didn't win.

How confusing.

I met another hero at that school.

He was tall and cold, almost brusque, with uniformly brown hair and sleek, steel rimmed glasses, everything about him gleamed with golden fire.

He won, so I followed him.

I knew he couldn't be a hero. He cared about his team distantly, stubbornly. He didn't love to show off, but he watched so avidly from the shadows of the sidelines.

I saw something more than that in the lines of his throat, the tension in his back and the gesture of his wrists when he talked to another boy.

That boy was neither a villain nor a hero, and I might have felt sorry for him is there was anything I could pity him for. There wasn't.

There was something horrible in the brightness of his smiles, the genuine sympathy. He loved too much and knew enough to keep from being truly honest. The flickering sunlight cast too many shadows over his face to read, and his eyes were clear.

His hair was gilt, his skin like paper.

I'd never seen anything like that smile.

I couldn't look at anybody like that, wanting to breathe and touch and devour them; more than longing or love, more that hatred but something like, cold and delirious and shuddering, never touching, always denying. I wanted to tell him that if was impossible to love a hero, or at least someone very close to it, because they would never, ever, love you back that way, but I couldn't, so I watched.

I couldn't love someone until bits and pieces of them became part of you, molded into skin and brushed through hair, facts and facets fluttering in your mind.

I didn't think I could.

I didn't understand, that something so hopeless and clumsy and rough could have been called love. I thought that love was gilded mirrors and Christmas tinsel, pink satin ribbons and fairy tale endings, white as porcelain angels.

I couldn't love like that, alien and unforgettable.

At least that's what I thought for years while I kept winning, defeating and dethroning. Vanquishing.

Until one day, when someone out of a page of the past smiled at me with slate colored eyes.

And then I could, against the red sunlight and white sky, someone who wasn't a hero and wasn't defeated.

Owari…

**Etc.**

**Ki-ku-maru BEAM; Eh, sorry about the short chapters, but now and then the drabbles appear, and it just turns out really short. Like this…I promise I'm trying!**

_It's easier to write than think. It's easier to type than to write by hand. It's easier to write idea and concepts and themes than to write stories- it's easier to sit, and read, and let your soul blossom in the light of the sun…_

_-And I am so very afraid of living by that principle. _


	3. Brilliantine

"Ask him to dance," said Eiji.

Tezuka sat, still and ramrod straight, irritation clawing at the knots of anxiety in his spine. He reached for a cup of punch with shaking fingers.

Somebody might have spiked it, and somebody after that, and after that, and after that…all the better, then.

The collar of his suit was beginning to loosen; the lines of his suit softening like an old man's face. He is spotless, black as a crow. His mouth is bitter. He settles in his seat, nodding towards the dance floor.

Sitting. Waiting.

Eiji doesn't understand.

A boy reaches for Fuji, imploring, pleading, earnest, sweat damping beneath his palms, no doubt. He looks like, Eiji thinks, the perfect image of sincere young love.

Fuji is lazy. Pale. Radiant. He reaches out an idle hand, empty, and tugs the boy to the dance floor, a prim half-shoulder away. His hands manipulate the disappointed body like a puppet: he tosses his glass over his shoulder, shattering into jewel-bright fragments.

They dance over a field of stars, diamonds prickling at their shoes. They crunch shards beneath their feet. His teeth are small and white and sharp, like the teeth of little wounded animals.

Tezuka sips from his glass, carefully resigned. He never expected anything else, Eiji realizes, but he also sees the softening line around Fuji's mouth when he looks over his shoulder at them, distantly watching.

Envious. Possessive.

He will never be yours, because you will not allow it, but he will never be anyone else's, because you will not allow that either, though he cannot.

And because he cannot, you will never allow it.

And you- will never, ever, be without him.

He has nothing of you, and everything of anything.

You have everything of him, and anything of nothing.

It's fair, since you cannot keep, and he can do nothing but give.

Eiji sees.

Oishi grips his shoulder, lightly familiarly- worried, and he melts back against him into the shadows, mouthing, it's a habit. They-

He looks over his shoulder as he leaves.

Are enough, perhaps, to be unhappy, and satisfied.

I would rather be unhappy with you than consoled


	4. Complications in Movement

I don't own this, of course, but I might try to steal it.

…

He should not have been surprised to see him there: after all this time, what could he not expect, but the sight was unfamiliar and unease was heavy on him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, and smoothed his shirtfront with sweating hands, pretending that his easy confidence was still whole and unshattered.

Fuji tilted his head and looked at him and there was pity in his eyes and on his lips: something cruel lay in him and the docility of his hands, and Ryoma wondered when the man he had known had left, quietly, like a stranger slipping through the doors of a well-beloved place. He looked forward and past him, just for a heartbeat, and understood; but-he had promised-, and his determination faltered.

Fuji smiled, and hatred and hope mingled in his face, as pale and fine as a statue, and it was not quite a smile anymore-just lips drawn against a slash of teeth, and he put his hands in his pockets and sauntered in, and there was nothing for Ryoma to do but follow.

Rather a fool, he thought, but he could not stop the world from turning anymore than he could have stopped Fuji, who was already broken and mended clumsily, and he mistrusted what lay before them. The guard was dead, Ryoma knew drearily, as surely as cherry blossoms in summer, and their clothes rustled abruptly, like paper, and there was an odd, questioning silence in the hallway, and Ryoma asked, almost helplessly," _Why_?"

They came at last to the door, unremarkable and solidly cast as a whole block of metal, a hole cut in the corridor. The lights flickered blue shadows in the hollows of Fuji's face, and the lines underneath his eyes: he stopped and turned to Ryoma, without eagerness or inflection. The key was small-a waxen shape of ivory smoothness and ambiguous, doubtful shape. He grasped it awkwardly and put out his hand and the door swung open soundlessly, feather light, seemingly to leap away from his hand, and Fuji's hands were clutched. The dark edges of his suit looked like raven feathers and his eyes were blank as he stepped over the threshold.

The floor looked like it had been carved out of sky but they were only looking at the man sitting on the floor, stick-thin and infinitely tall. He wore black, and might have been made out of telephone wires and whittled bones, but he was, nevertheless the same person. He did not look at Ryoma, but was still.

"Go home." He said gently, but he was only pleading softly.

"No," said Fuji, "because you left, and that's not home, and you never said why."

Tezuka jerked his shoulder at the turning, wide, strange room and the world and said, " I have responsibilities, and you aren't a part of them anymore. This is not your place."

"It's only the edge of the world," said Fuji sharply and with exquisite nastiness, and in the tone of somebody making reasonable sense with madmen, "and not too far. I don't mind, because you think it matters and it doesn't," and he stepped past the gun that Ryoma held to him with what he claimed were unshaking fingers, past the white computers and silver weapons, and placed cold fingers on the curve of Tezuka's cheek.

"Go," said Tezuka, but without conviction, and Fuji laughed at him, quick and golden, and brushed fingertips against his cold wrist.

"I hated you for years yet, so don't expect to pass me off with platitudes."

"You'll frighten the men," said Tezuka, thoughtfully, and pressed his lips together quickly. "Shan't," said Fuji amicably, and he was more dangerously alive then he had ever been.

…

Why would Fuji be always the villain?

Though, he is terribly good at it. I'm not channeling him as I ought, but all's not horrible. The evilness is undermined, but that's called keeping it in the family.


	5. Growing Pains

In which Ryoma is immature.

…..

Growing Pains

Morning;

"Help me," he says, almost insolent, and the other boy stops, looks up at him. He quirks his mouth downwards, glancing.

Fuji-san slopes his thin fingers together. "Come back later," he says too softly, too kindly, and Ryoma almost runs. He stumbles instead, and his upperclassman does not move to help him: he can feel mild eyes at his back, intent turning towards him, and the feeling is unpleasant.

Lunch is an empty affair; the food is uninteresting, and someone tosses him a can of juice, laughing, and he turns his arm and catches it, setting it down by his side. It seems unfamiliar to him. "Hey," said Momoshiro-**sempai**, abruptly, and his fingertips snag in the back of Ryoma's jersey.

"What's up?" he says, and Ryoma is silent. His friend snatches the juice away, teasing, and he reaches for it, too late. A line of dampness curls on the bench. He talks, but Ryoma can only see his mouth moving, delineating words that fade in the face of silence, small and puckered, with eyes like summer. "Be quiet," he says abruptly, and Momo frowns, his mouth twisting. He crumples an empty bag of chips: it deflates silently in his clenched hand, and he imagines the questions crowding.

When he goes to wash up he can see his skin is white and tense, and his eyes are darkly washed. His mouth is a crooked line, but he makes sure that when he walks out, his hands do not tremble. He carries three racquets in his bag, but nothing else.

The afternoon lies before him, devastated and triumphant. Momoshiro's jogs his shoulder, and Ryoma is surprised by the feeling. He walks slowly-if he turns his head, he can see swing of his friend's arm, the line of his neck. I don't want to, he almost says, but the courts are small and white and the trees are cool, and he turns to them involuntarily.

Momoshiro sits with him, silently, and watches fixedly until he eats, still rather reluctant. Ryoma's eyes are fixed somewhere above, at a point beyond his face and the frame of his shoulder, as if he was looking at something invisible. The press of his weight by his side is comforting.

"You're immature," says Ryoma, lazily, as if he were stirring the surface of a pond and a golden fish swam down, and lay silently at that bottom. "Shut up," said Momoshiro, not unkindly, and Ryoma closed his eyes in bliss. Jerk, he says, rather affectionately, and leaves.

Afternoon:

Disappointment is a familiar taste in his mouth: he closes his eyes and stands perfectly still, the racquet hanging from his side. He can almost see his father's feet crouching in the dust, ready, lurking. "I resign," he says, but his cousin is laughing from the door and frowning at his father, telling them to come in and eat. He washed his hands and his face like a good child.

After dinner, Momo-sempai calls him, and Ryoma picks up the phone, listening to the greeting, and very deliberately, hangs up. He calls him back a minute later, apologizing for the bad connection, and Momoshiro's voice is suspicious and dry.

When he goes to sleep he closes his eyes and stares out the window, pretending he can see through the shutters and already hear him throwing rocks at the window, calling for Ryoma to come down and walk with him.

Romantic

"Momoshiro-sempai," says the brat, and his voice is sweet. He grimaces. "Do you know," he says very precisely, " how to tell someone you like them?"

Momo stares at him. His mind has gone blank, and he discovers he's forgotten how to speak but still makes a valiant effort.

"To confess," he elaborates.

"Er," says Momoshiro. "Sorry. No idea. I've never-" He stops.

"Oh," says Ryoma, rather thoughtfully. "Good."


End file.
